


Chasing Oblivion

by Cornerofmadness



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Dani is a great friend, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:14:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23744371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cornerofmadness/pseuds/Cornerofmadness
Summary: Dani has to know why Malcolm tried to fry his own brain.
Comments: 18
Kudos: 88
Collections: Bite Sized Bits of Fic from 2020, Trope Bingo: Round Fourteen





	Chasing Oblivion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vanillafluffy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanillafluffy/gifts).



> **Disclaimer:** Not mine, Chris Fedak and Sam Sklaver owns it
> 
>  **Notes:** written for vanilla_fluffy for the prompt of Prodigal Son, Malcolm Bright +any, "What on Earth were you thinking?!" I swear I wanted to do something funny. In that, I failed. This is a side order of angst instead and set the day after _Internal Affairs_. Also uses the trope bingo prompted of altered states of consciousness.

XXX

It wasn’t how she planned on doing this. She merely wanted to talk to Bright after all the insanity that went down in the precinct but the moment he opened his door, she blurted out, “What on earth were you thinking?”

“Hi Dani, nice to see you. Want to come in?” He smirked. He stepped back and gestured her in with his casted hand.

“Sorry,” she murmured coming in, “But really, what were you thinking?”

“Can I get you something to drink? Tea? Bourbon? Whiskey?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you going to keep dodging the question unless I say yes to the drink?” 

“Probably but I need more context.”

She snorted. That was true. He did a hundred questionable things a day. She should narrow it down for him. “I’ll take tea if you have it.”

“I have plenty.” He led the way to his kitchen island, moving slow. She knew he was still hurting in spite of saying his side didn’t hurt during the interview with Coppenrath. Dani knew that had to be a lie. “I have a very nice Assam and there is some nicely nuanced teas coming out of Kenya. But you might like the Lady Grey. It’s like Earl Grey but with lavender.”

He might as well be talking in another language. To her tea was something she bought on impulse in the grocery store. Dani decided to go with what she knew. “The Lady Grey. Do you need help?”

He shook his head just as someone came down the steps from whatever he had in the level above his living area. She had been curious about it the last time she’d been in his loft but hadn’t felt it right to sneak up there after she had punched him into unconsciousness. 

“Mr. Bright, you should not be doing that,” Ilsa said, eyeing him filling the pot. “That is what I’m for.”

“I can get my own water, Ilsa.” Bright heaved a melodramatic sigh. “And if it bothers you that much, Dani can take over for me.”

Dani took the kettle from him. “I’ll get it, ma’am.”

“Why don’t you go home, Ilsa? I’m fine. Once Dani’s visit is over, I’ll go to bed, promise. I don’t need you here watching me.”

“That is not what your mother pays me for, Mr. Bright.” Ilsa huffed. “I have another hour yet, and you still need your bath.”

“I’m _fine_ , I promise!” His lips wobbled. Dani tried not to laugh. Malcolm leaned close and whispered, “No matter how I answer your question, promise me that you’ll distract her long enough for me to get into the shower on my own. I do _not_ want or need her help!”

Dani chuckled and his expression grew so long she had to take pity on him. “Okay.”

“Or have you found someone else to help you?” Ilsa asked, pointing to Dani.

Malcolm’s eyes got so big he could have been a cartoon character. Dani doubted she fared much better. “Ilsa! I’m sure Dani doesn’t want to help me in the shower. I don’t _need_ help. I’m fine. No one was helping me at the hospital.” He turned to Dani. “I am….” He was so flustered he couldn’t even finish.

“Well, we’ve been in the shower together before!” She couldn’t help teasing him and watching him go so red she expected him to burst into flames.

“I don’t remember that…and didn’t you punch me?”

“I did. Your water is getting close to boiling. Are your tea leaves ready?” Dani asked as his nurse went down the hall to the bathroom, presumably to get things ready for his shower.

He shook his head and fetched the tin of tea out of his cabinet. She had to help him get the leaves into the cage that went into the tea pot. “Thanks. Ilsa,” he called and she reappeared. “Seriously, Dani is going to stay for a while. It’s a little hard to be you know…with you here. I won’t tell Mother if you leave early, and Dani will be here if I need help in the shower.”

Ilsa stared at Dani until she grew uncomfortable but she held the nurse’s gaze, putting her hand over Malcolm’s. Ilsa nodded. “All right, Mr. Bright. I know young people need to be alone but you are in no shape for anything…athletic.”

“Just tea and talk, I swear,” Bright replied but he grew even redder. Dani almost choked trying to hold in a laugh.

Ilsa gathered up her things and left. Malcolm sighed and said, “Sorry about that. I just didn’t want her chasing me around the shower.”

“Oh the images.” Dani laughed. “She’ll probably tell your mother we’re sleeping together.”

“Mother likes you…and might already think that.” Shockingly his blush deepened further. “If nothing else, she thinks you’re my best friend even if you only brought me home because Gil asked you to.”

The kettle whistled saving her. She hadn’t realized he’d heard her tell his mother that. He must have ears like a bat. Of course growing up like he did, he was probably hyperaware of everything and yet somehow managed to wander into trouble so frequently she had to think it was on purpose. Dani scowled as she poured the water into the tea pot and the floral sweetness of the lavender and Earl Grey rose to greet her. She hated thinking that he sought trouble but she had seen him do nigh-suicidal stuff before. He sounded hurt and even though she’d come here to yell at him, she didn’t like him hurting because of her. “I brought you home because I wanted to help. I just didn’t want your mother reading too much into it. After weeks of talking to her in the hospital, I know she can be…enthusiastic. Also I was a little worn down by the Jell-O rant.” She smiled, hoping to take away some of the sting.

“No one likes green Jell-O,” he hissed.

“Well, I like the red. What do you have against strawberry or cherry?”

“I love them but _real_ flavors, not the fake stuff. Don’t like fake grape much either.” Bright scowled. “Time the brew for five minutes, please, Dani.”

Dani shook her head, amused by how seriously he took this. Besides didn’t he suck on fake flavors as hard candy and lollipops all the time? “Bright, you look like you’re in pain. Balancing on that stool isn’t doing your insides much good. That knife might not have hit anything major but it _did_ hit some things. Go sit on the couch.” Edrisa had confided in her that his stomach and intestines had been nicked, an easy fix but one that they had worried would cause an infection inside him, which was one of the reasons he’d been kept in the hospital so long. He didn’t argue, slowly slithering off the stool and walking to the couch much more slowly that he had been when he’d illicitly shown up for work in the past few days. Here he didn’t have to hide he wasn’t at one hundred percent. Gil wasn’t about to let him come back now. “Where are your cups?”

He gingerly lowered himself onto the couch and turned on his TV to a music channel, classical surprising her not at all. “In the cupboard by the sink. The sugar is up there too. I don’t want cream in my tea. It deactivates all the good flavonoids but I might have some if you want it.”

“No thanks. How many sugars do you take?”

“Two please.”

“So now that I don’t have to distract your nurse for you, are you going to answer me honestly?”

He frowned and turned away from her. “Can I have my tea first?”

“Yes. So, how long before we’re called here on the case of the deceased nurse?” Dani grinned.

“The next time she tries to muscle me into the shower.” He flopped his head back on the couch pillows. “I know Mother means well but this nurse is going to be the death of me.”

“Can you manage without her?”

He shrugged. “I can get my own clothes on and food is just a phone call away. About the one thing I need is one of those pill holders because I can’t get the lids off the bottles. I’m fine but it was this or move back home until the cast is off. I’d have been in the basement looking for a saw within the hour.” Bright snorted. “I told her I could have gone to Gil’s.”

“Is he still speaking to you?” Dani narrowed her eyes at him, not that he was looking. “You _were_ harsh.”

He sighed, melting into the couch. “I was cruel. And I apologized. He came by last night to check on me. He’ll probably call soon. I should never have said what I did and certainly not in public, especially since it wasn’t entirely true.”

“Or at all.”

At that he twisted on the couch so he could look at her. “No, it really was partially true. It’s why it hurt him so much. That first case, the one copycatting my father, he told me he didn’t want to wake up my demons but he needed to know if he was reading the case right. He knew he was dragging me into this mess, _but_ he told me to not go back to my father. That’s on me.” He sighed again, leaning into the couch more. “He was right but he also knew I would go if it means solving the case. Still I shouldn’t have used him as a punching bag because I’m hurting.”

“Watkins messed you up,” she replied. “I don’t know how you’re doing as good as you are, which honestly isn’t saying much because I don’t think you’re doing good at all. I went with the crime scene techs into that room where he held you. Someone had to.” Dani wished it hadn’t been her. Granted JT was there too, and Gil. No one on the team was willing to sit it out. Hell, Edrisa wanted to help but there was no body, no need for her to be there. She went to get the cups down seeing a minute left on the timer. 

“I’m sorry,” he said softly.

“What do you have to apologize for? Everything that happened there is on Watkins.” Maybe he needed to apologize for going off with Shannon with barely an effort to call in like he was supposed to. Dani wished she could scrub the images out of her head. She had seen far too many crime scenes already in her life but they had been strangers. This time it was her friend’s blood all over the cement floor. There had been _so_ much of it. The metallic, salty stench of it cloying, gagging her even now in her memories. She had honestly thought they’d call the hospital and find out Malcolm had died on the operating table, his heart giving out because pints of his blood were all over the hidden room’s floor. She shared his blood type, had gone to the hospital later that night and donated some for him, Gil too. Hers was probably still swimming in adrenaline because she remembered her limbs shaking, still from earlier in the day when they didn’t find him in the cabin. She wondered if they would find more evidence against Watkins and Bright’s dad once all the crime scene analysis was over. She wondered if his dad had murdered people in that basement space while his family was right upstairs. She couldn’t ask Bright that. All at once she had an answer to her own question. She knew what he was thinking when he had played with electricity. She wanted that room out of her mind’s eye. He had so much more he wanted out of his.

Dani thumbed off the timer, took the leaves out of the pot and poured two mugs full. After sweetening them, she took them over to him and sat next to him on the couch. She surrendered a mug to him. “There you go.”

“Thanks.” He sipped at it and she felt the tension of his body where their shoulders touched. He didn’t want to have the conversation he knew was coming but Dani didn’t want to let him off the hook. She needed to know for certain. She had set aside her trust issues, made room in her heart for him and she needed to know if he was going to leave a scar.

She took her own sip, widening her eyes as the pleasant, rich taste filled her mouth. “This is good. You need to donate some of this to the station house.”

“I’ll put a stash in your desk.” He smiled.

“Thanks. So, back to my question. You didn’t give me an answer at the station house the first time I ask.”

“What on earth was I thinking? I’m assuming you mean about the ECT.”

“Yes, obviously. You could have electrocuted yourself behind a locked door and I need to know why.”

He sighed, staring into his tea cup. “Altered states of consciousness are a strange thing, Dani. Granted, I _try_ for that sometimes with my meditation and yoga. I’m trying to find a more peaceful state than I’m usually in. Sometimes I manage it. But…things are going sideways.”

“You’re hallucinating,” she said softly. He knew she and the others had listened in on his talk with Coppenrath, or at least part of it because it was a sting operation. “After Watkins and all he put you through, I’m not sure I blame you.”

“Before that really. My therapist said I was in crisis. I’m a psychologist, Dani. I know I’m teetering on a psychotic break and have been between the lack of sleep and seeing my father again.” He slid down a bit on the couch. “The hallucinations are horrible, worse even than that time in Harvard when I volunteered for a study. One of the reasons I was so disappointed in Dr. Brown and her faulty study was I went through a similar one.”

“You took LSD?” Dani couldn’t hold in her shock.

“It was supposed to be a micro dose for depression. They’re actually having some promising results with that. But let’s just say that the metric system and the American student aren’t always a good mix and we got about ten times what we should have. Not at all fun, well okay it was until people started melting.” He shook his head. “Seeing music was rather interesting to be honest.”

“I get that,” she said and he shot her a sympathetic look. He knew she was an addict and from that case might be able to guess ecstasy mixed with LSD wasn’t foreign to her as much as she wished she could say it was.

“Anyhow, the hallucinations combined with things Watkins said to me.” Bright paused, studying her face as if trying to remember what had been said on and off recording. Dani hoped she showed nothing. Let him reveal what he wanted because he wanted to, not because he thought she already knew. “I needed to forget, Dani. I _had_ to get it out of my head because I didn’t know…” He sucked in a ragged breath, tears filling his eyes but not quite spilling. 

She put her hand on his arm just above the cast and gave it a gentle squeeze. He wore long sleeves even though the loft wasn’t cold, even though his shirt was probably going to be stretched out over the cast. He always wore long sleeves. She wondered if he was hiding scars. She could imagine he might be. He was about to confess to being suicidal and she knew it. She doubted it was the first time. Even in the hospital other than those first few days he wore long sleeved pajamas brought from home, and she’d been unable to visit long and her head too much of a mess for her to have thought of looking for cut marks on his one visible wrist. 

“It’s so hard to live with these things in my head,” he finally whispered. “The meds aren’t working. Therapy isn’t working. I can’t keep burdening Gil with it. Mother’s response is always more meds and my sister…”

“Might put it on television,” Dani said, and he flinched. She probably shouldn’t have reminded him but she had been stunned by it, by that level of oblivious betrayal and the look on Malcolm’s face, half in the frame as his father’s veneer had been peeled away.

“ECT can make you forget, Dani. That’s one of the reasons it was used and abused. I just wanted to forget.”

She gave his arm another little squeeze. “But you can’t forget it all, Malcolm. There’s just too much.”

“I know that but to forget the memories Watkins dredged up and put into context, I could live with forgetting that.” He thumped his casted hand on his thigh, shaking out of her grasp. “I’d forgotten so much of that camping trip and now…I’m seeing it every time I shut my eyes and sometimes when they’re open. I don’t know how to live like this, Dani. Was forgetting such a bad desire?” He leaned against her shoulder.

She slithered her arm between his back and the couch, pulling him closer, letting him steal what comfort he could from the closeness. “I don’t know but the way you tried, yes, that’s bad. You know better than I what could have happened. No one would have been there to turn off that machine. It would have fried you. Even if you hadn’t died, what would you be, Malcolm?” He looked at her, not that used to hearing her use his name so often. “It’s your brain that makes you, you. I don’t want some placid man who doesn’t remember me or much of anything at all.”

“You told me, just before he got me, that you didn’t think I was broken beyond repair. You’re wrong,” he choked.

“No, I don’t think I am. I didn’t say keeping you together would be easy but I reject the idea that you are so broken no one wants you. You didn’t see me, Gil and JT fighting to get you back. I almost wish you could have because as painful as it was, because then you’d understand that you aren’t a hopelessly shattered piece of glass. More like one of Edrisa’s jigsaws.”

“With a couple pieces missing,” he snorted.

Dani chuckled softly. “Maybe so. We’ll just fill in those spots with something new.”

The smile he favored her with was as fragile as a butterfly’s wing. “I like the sound of that.”

“It’s like you haven’t heard how good you actually are enough.” Dani marveled at it. She’s never seen anyone who showed the kindness he did to even the criminals, who had his empathy and yet he acted as if no one ever had had any for him, maybe except for Gil. Then again she’d worked with Swanson and the rest of his former FBI team. He’d have been better off getting sympathy from the suspects he helped to arrest.

“Mother and Gil, of course, think I’m great.” The smile began to falter and crumble. “Even my father but no, other than them and a handful of others, mostly I’ve heard how I’m a narcissist like my father. How I’m weird, which okay maybe. Awww, poor Jessica, have you heard about what her son did this time? How embarrassing for her. What can you expect with a father like that? He’s bad seed from the start. She really should have chosen better.” He parroted things he’d obviously heard tossed his way, bitter and hurt. “As if my father walked around with a name badge reading serial killer.”

“I guess he’d have to have been normal to have been so successful,” she said though wondered on it. She’d heard of other serial killers who were obvious outsiders and yet successful killers. 

“My father can be very charming.” He shut his eyes. “Can we talk about something else now?”

“Yes, you answered my question but I need you to know something,” she said, and he reopened his eyes, watching her. “You can call me, you know. You don’t always have to dump it on Gil or keep it bottled up. You can talk to me, and while I know you and JT probably will never be a hundred percent on the same wavelength, you can talk to him. You’re friends now.”

The tip of his tongue peeked out, wetting his lips before disappearing as he steeled his jaw against a well of emption. Bright simply nodded and mouthed ‘thank you.’ She rubbed his side where she had her arm around him.

“Do you want to watch something on TV for a while?” she asked, giving him an out from the emotional barrage. “Or are you tired?”

“Not tired. TV’s good. You don’t have to stay, Dani. I swear, I really am…okay, I’m _not_ fine. I know I’m not but I’m okay to be alone.”

“But if I want to stay?”

“We can watch TV, have some more tea. Honestly Ilsa tries to put me to bed at seven like I’m a toddler.” He snorted. “I’m good for hours before I need to shower and go to sleep.”

“But you are good there, right? I’d feel bad if we ran off your nurse and you can’t handle showering by yourself.”

“Are you volunteering because that’s certainly not how I imagined showering with you would go,” he said, and then his eyes bulged.

Withdrawing her arm from around him, Dani twisted on the couch so she could look at him directly. He tried to look innocent and failed miserably.

“That came out wrong.”

“Are you sure?” She crinkled her nose at him.

Bright shrank against the couch. “Mostly.”

“In your wildest dreams, buddy.”

“That would certainly be preferable to my usual dreams!”

Dani bopped him lightly on the head. “Men. I can just imagine what that dream would be like.”

“A fair sight better than Ilsa judo tossing me into submission in the shower,” he promised her.

“I’m going to remind you _again_ that the last time we were in the shower together, I knocked you out for _hours_.” Dani grabbed the remote off the coffee table and jabbed it into his chest. “You better find something to watch while you’re still conscious. Do you want more tea?”

“Yes please,” he said, going to his DVR list. “And that would still be a better outcome than Ilsa in my shower.”

“Men, just when I found one that wasn’t the same as all the others.” Dani gathered up the mugs to fetch more. “But you’re just like them all…well, maybe Gil’s different.”

“You didn’t know him when he was younger. Did you ever meet Jackie? Trust me, he’s like the rest of us.” 

She couldn’t see him from the kitchen but she knew he was rolling his eyes. “I met Jackie a few times before she passed. You knew her well didn’t you? I think I might actually remember your face from the funeral.”

“She was a second mom, which Mother didn’t like that I felt like that about her, but it’s true. I used to spend nights with the Arroyos a lot especially in the summer when I wasn’t at boarding school. So trust me, Gil’s still a man.”

“God, you didn’t walk in on them after one of your nightmares, did you?” Dani shuddered to think.

“No! Thank god. There were a few near misses.”

“More fodder for your therapist.”

“Dr. Le Deux, it was _such_ a scary week this week. I saw things…” He chuckled. “And so thankful never had that trauma with my actual parents either. I’m scarred enough as it is.”

Dani laughed. “I can’t even imagine and I’m grateful for it.” She popped the mugs in the microwave. “So you’re all the same.”

“It’s true. I read a psychological study that said on average men think about sex twenty times a day, which is about twice as much as women but also not statistically different from how much we think about food or sleep.” He shrugged. “That’s just how humans are wired, well most of us. There are of course statistical outliers.”

“I’m sure and I’m sure I don’t need to hear about those. Find anything on TV yet?”

He shook his head and went back to looking. By the time the tea was reheated and she had sat back down with him, he’d selected something. Dani eyed his choice then looked at him.

“ _The X-Files_?”

“I know it’s old but I like it.”

“Your place, your trauma we’re getting you past, your choice. I like it too.”

“Besides,” he smiled. “I can see a little of us in this.”

Dani pursed her lips thinking on it. “Yeah, Scully’s smart and capable. I can relate and Mulder’s traumatized and out there, so that fits for you.”

He nudged her with his casted hand. “Hey!”

“I will buy you dinner if on our next case you tell JT you think it’s aliens.” Dani grinned.

Malcolm laughed hard until he was holding his injured side. “Don’t do that to me!”

“I’m serious!”

“You’re on.”

“Excellent.” 

Dani settled in next to him. She knew he wasn’t better by a long shot but that laugh had been so real and so good to hear. She was happy to sit here and watch old TV with him if it helped. He didn’t tell her that his father had tried to kill him but she’d heard on the recording, knew how much hurt he was holding inside. He’d tell her when he was ready. In the meantime, what he needed most was a friend and Dani could be that for him. If he needed a shoulder, hers was always on offer.


End file.
